7th September 2010

Catalogue > History

The Weight of a Mustard Seed

Wendell Steavenson

If you are unable to protect yourself from a tyrant, how can you protect your family? And how does a proud man live with that knowledge?

Reminiscent in part of Stasiland and The Bookseller of Kabul, this is the story of one family's struggle to survive the iniquities of Saddam Hussein’s savage dictatorship. It is a career-defining book for Wendell Steavenson.

In The Weight of a Mustard Seed, Wendell Steavenson tells the story of General Kamel Sachet, a decorated hero of the long Iran–Iraq war and a favourite of Saddam Hussein’s. As Steavenson reveals the emotional and psychological scars the Sachet family suffer as a result of decades spent living with war and repression, she reaches towards the heart of a previously unspoken story of Iraq: a once prosperous nation, reduced by Hussein’s megalomania and paranoia to bankruptcy, corruption and impotence. The result is an intimate, startling and gripping account of the slow destruction of Sachet, his family and his country.

About the author

Wendell Steavenson is the author of the acclaimed Stories I Stole (Atlantic Books, 2002), which was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. She has worked for Time and written for a variety of publications including the Telegraph, Granta, Prospect and the New Yorker. She lives in Paris.

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